Allegiance

January 16, 2020January 16, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Allegiance, Allegory, control, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Folklore, History, humanity, Myth, No More War, WritePhoto, Writing prompt 13 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

They called her Allegiance.

Contract and insurance, she was. Revered and guarded, both.

So well revered and so well guarded, in fact, that with time she became almost forgotten and had turned more a symbol than a soul. She sometimes wondered if she was in that way not too dissimilar to many of her kind through time, even if they had been so for far shorter spans.

Women often were made ornamental. Used as symbolic pawns, utilized as cementers of allegiances, then blamed for those that broke.

It helped her feel less lonely, knowing that even in her immortal isolation she was still in some way a member of a community of others who’d been perched into positions, as she was, without much of a choice. Possessions and producers, keepers of the continuity of power, serfdom and thrones.

They called her Allegiance.

And she sat in her fortified tower, aware of the two rows of guards: One row looking out against any who may get it in their minds to sabotage, the other row looking in against any indication that she may get it in hers to leave.

They needn’t have worried. At least not about her.

There was enough of misery without adding heads to spikes in any kind of rebellion, where those most likely to be harmed were those least likely to have been given part in the decision.

She accepted her place. A figurehead to keep the heads of others firmly on their shoulders and their children’s hearts safer from the sorrows of orphanage and war.

So she stayed.

As centuries passed, those who’d placed her there took less care with guarding her and the promises she’d represented. The tower crumbled. The guards played cards and drank and slept and grew lazy, and she took comfort in knowing that at least this meant they weren’t in battle. Even if she shivered, windowless, her walls crumbling all around.

Perhaps, she thought, as winds whistled and the stories of her had become lore printed onto metal plaques for tourists to ignore, it was all as it should be.

Perhaps one day there will not be a need.

Perhaps one day allegiances will be built-in, rather than built-up and set with guarded fences that time and lassitude and apathy were certain to erode.

Till then, Allegiance waited.

For the moment, the ruins of her tower stood.

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto

They Bowed

May 16, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: All is One, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Folklore, Interconnectedness, Micro-fiction, Myth, Understanding, WritePhoto, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 23 Comments

Photo prompt: Sue Vincent

“They bow, you see,” Mir explained.

The child held on silently to his hand.

Mir peered down at the small head, so uncharacteristically still, the red curls shining like molten gold under the sun.

The quiet lingered and Mir did not break it. More words would not change how there was only so much one could say about some things.

A bird fleeted close. A bee buzzed by. Somewhere a donkey brayed and a dog’s bark answered.

Still the child did not move.

Mir let the air in and out of his lungs mark the passage of time, even as he knew it would not be measured in the same way by the child. Nor would it matter. Time is rarely what it seems to be, anyhow.

The air shimmered. The scent of smoke wafted from someplace beyond the fields, and in it mixed the faintest hints of manure and baking bread.

A caterpillar inched its way atop a blade of grass.

“There is no wind,” the child finally noted.

“There is not,” Mir confirmed.

“Are they tied together?”

“They are holding limbs.”

The child looked at her own hand in her grandfather’s. She did not look up, but Mir could feel the connection being made as it wove a thread of understanding between the two of them, between them all.

A hush fell. Then a sudden breeze rippled through the field and whistled an unnamed sound as it passed through the stacks. The tips nodded.

The child bowed back.

For Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo Prompt: Wicker

The Colonists

March 23, 2019March 23, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Community, Creative writing, Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Folklore, imagination, Just for fun, Micro-fiction, Myth, Photo prompt, Tradition, WritePhoto 23 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

They would come out when dark was complete under a moon that was yet to be reborn.

First a scout would be sent. One not quite old enough to have their wisdom be missed, but not quite so young that they’d be careless or uninformed. It was an honor and a worry, both. For not all scouts returned, and laws dictated that no one is to follow and the outing abandoned until the next dark comes. The safety of the colony outweighed any singular life, no matter how heartbroken they were over losing one of their own or how many nightmares wracked the communal dreams for many sleeps afterwards.

Most times, blessed be the hidden stars, the scout would return safely. If they confirmed that all was as it should be, any who could walk would funnel topside through the tunnels that honeycombed their underground world, and out into the rocky canyon which was formed a million years ago by a whip of light from the stars.

The colony would climb over hills of leaves and navigate the muddy ponds at the bottom of the canyon, all in silence that only the heartbeats in their collective chests would pierce. For the predators were many and the colonists were small and peaceable. They lacked fangs or claws and were opposed to weaponry. The universe that sprawled beyond the walls of their rock canyon provided the provisions they required. They took the danger with the blessings.

Once beyond the relative shelter of the canyon walls, they’d fan out to forage and gather: edible leaves, stalks of grass for feed and weave and bedding, acorns, nuts, seeds, berries, and the occasional fallen fruit or discovered tuber that required many hands to trundle back into the tunnels where they lived.

They’d work until the elder who tracked the darkness passed the whisper to return, and they would fall in line to carry the final batches home.

The last to enter the canyon would pull a broom of leaves behind them – a gesture of traditional thanks for the sustenance, and a practical act for sweeping away many footsteps. The ancients had tunneled pathways for them to emerge into the night from, but there was no need to make those very pathways highways to decimation. They took care to not be known.

With all returned, the elders would seal the rocky door and bless it closed, and the colony would sigh relief as the rock itself would seem to whisper as it settled into slumber til the next unborn moon darkened the sky.

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto Challenge